seal  President Jischke Speech
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November 7, 2003

Purdue President Martin C. Jischke made this presentation at the Board of Trustees meeting on Friday (11/7).

President Jischke updates trustees on strategic plan progress

Five years ago this board undertook a thorough assessment of the university.

What you discovered was not a surprise. Purdue was in excellent shape — among the best and greatest universities in the nation and world. In fact, it was perfectly positioned to move forward to what has been called "the next level of excellence."

No matter how good any person or any institution becomes there is always the potential for improvement.

To accomplish the next set of goals, you determined the university needed plans and strategies.

We benchmarked Purdue against peer universities. We evaluated our strengths, our weaknesses, and what we need to do to accomplish our goals.

In the fall of 2001, you approved Purdue's five-year strategic plans with specific, targeted initiatives in our missions for learning, discovery and engagement.

First, we are adding 300 faculty members, reducing reliance on teaching assistants.

Second, we are expanding our engagement efforts with the state of Indiana.

Third, we are increasing the diversity of our campuses.

Fourth, we are expanding scholarships and financial aid to ensure student access.

Fifth, we are offering competitive salaries so we can recruit and retain the best faculty and staff.

Sixth, in partnership with the state, we are investing more than three-quarters of a billion dollars in the modernization and expansion of our infrastructure.

And seventh, we are investing in programs that will expand our research capacity.

Today I am happy to report that after two years our plans are working. Purdue is becoming a better university.

And as Purdue becomes a better university we are helping Indiana became a better state.

Our success to date does not mean everything is perfect and on schedule. In some areas we are not advancing as rapidly as we had planned. We have not yet reached our vision of preeminence.

But thanks to the leadership of this board, thanks to our faculty and staff, our state, alumni and friends, we are well on our way.

To help provide us with the financial resources to accomplish our plans, we have launched the Campaign for Purdue.

The goal is to raise $1.3 billion by 2007.

This is the largest capital campaign in the history of Indiana higher education. It is among the largest by public universities in the nation.

With four years remaining in the seven-year campaign, we have raised $800 million! Our friends and alumni clearly believe in what we are doing.

We raised a record $311.6 million in 2002-2003. That was a 33 percent increase over the record year of 2001-2002!

These funds are being put immediately to work, improving our student learning, our discovery and engagement with the state of Indiana.

Our strategic plans do not require substantial increases in investment from the state. We only asked the governor and General Assembly to stay the course with support for higher education.

State operating appropriations to Purdue for 2002-2003 were $224.4 million. That was a decline of $2.9 million from 2001-2002 in accordance with the governor's Deficit Management Plan.

State appropriations have increased by $8.6 million this year to $233 million.

We appreciate this support.

In the last session of the General Assembly, our public officials lined up solidly behind education and its impact on economic development. At the same time, we recognize that the state dollars per student are not as great as in many other parts of the country.

In 2001-2002, our state appropriations per student at Purdue ranked 44 percent below the average of our peers. That difference is worth $217 million!

This fall the West Lafayette campus enrolled 30,851 undergraduates and 7,996 graduate and professional students.

This total of 38,847 students closely matches our enrollment management plans. Systemwide Purdue enrollment this year reached 69,044 with 74.4 percent of our students from Indiana.

In West Lafayette, the average SAT score of incoming freshmen remained a record high 1150 — an increase of 40 points in five years.

Entering National Merit Scholars increased by 3.4 percent, to 91 students.

We are bringing some of the best students in the nation to Purdue.

Indiana resident Academic Success Scholars increased by 18.6 percent, to 229. Indiana Top Scholars increased by 24.8 percent, to 171.

If we are going to further impact brain drain on the state of Indiana, we must begin by keeping our best high school students attending college in-state instead of going elsewhere to study and ultimately build their successful careers.

Minority diversity at Purdue has increased to 15.2 percent for tenured/tenure track faculty. It increased to 20.6 percent for all faculty.

We are showing good progress in this important strategic plan initiative. Staff diversity increased slightly to 7.1 percent. We still have more to accomplish to meet our objectives in this area.

Student diversity grew to 10.5 percent, an increase of 14 percent since the fall of 2001.

Diversity among new undergraduates is 13.2 percent. Diversity among all undergraduates is 10.8 percent. We continue to lag behind our peers in student diversity. But we are making progress.

For example, the number of new African-American students this fall is up 15.8 percent over last year.

Thanks in part to our Campaign for Purdue, total student financial aid increased 14 percent this year to $329 million. We are working hard to ensure that Purdue remains accessible to qualified students.

About half our undergraduates graduate with debt. Their average indebtedness is $16,636.

That compares favorably with our peers.

Faculty salaries are increasing generally in pace with peer institutions. They remain 10 percent below the peer average. But when data is available for this year, we expect it will show we are gaining ground in this area. We are narrowing the gap. Staff salaries remain competitive with respective markets.

In October, The Scientist, an international news magazine published in print and on the Web announced results of a survey called "Best Places to Work in Scientific Institutions."

In that survey, Purdue ranks No. 2 among best places to work in American academia.

Purdue is ranked first in fairness in salary decisions within the United States. It has the best university work environment in the country, according to a survey of researchers by the magazine

This is the impact of our strategic plans.

In the past year, 17 new faculty members were appointed as distinguished or named professors. This brings our total to 90.

This is steady progress. But we remain behind our peers.

Campaign for Purdue funds will continue to advance this important aspect of our plans in the years ahead.

Construction on the West Lafayette campus continues at an unprecedented rate.

We have opened the $35 million Rawls Hall in our School of Management. This fall we have also opened our $41 million Visual and Performing Arts Building. We have opened an $11 million Bowen Laboratory for Large-Scale Civil Engineering Research — the premier civil engineering laboratory of its kind in the nation.

We have started a $20 million addition to our Chemical Engineering Building — now named Forney Hall. At Pfendler Hall in our School of Agriculture, we are preserving history at the same time we are meeting needs of today and tomorrow with a $16 million renovation and addition to the 100-year-old building.

There is $100 million worth of construction under way in Discovery Park, including a nanotechnology center, a bioscience center, a center for entrepreneurship, and a new biomedical engineering building.

We have announced the end of fund raising for a new $20 million Computer Science Building.

Purdue ranks first in the nation in graduation of information technology specialists. We launched the first computer science program in the nation. Now this new facility will allow the Department of Computer Sciences to concentrate its classrooms, faculty offices and laboratories into two neighboring buildings rather than the five currently used and widely scattered across the campus.

New labs in this building will have the latest, very finest features and equipment to enhance research that will push the boundaries in nanoscience; graphics and scientific visualization; bioinformatics; information security; software systems; wireless, ubiquitous computing; and global computer networks.

We are nearing the end of fund raising for a new $46 million multipurpose engineering building. A new $16 million Alumni Center is under construction.

Our strategic plan goal for learning calls for us to attain and preserve excellence through programs of superior quality and value in every academic discipline. Our metrics show we are meeting success.

This year the freshman retention rate increased from 88 percent, to 88.6 percent.

The six-year graduation rate went up from 67.6 percent to 68.6 percent. Career placement of graduates reached 70 percent. And advanced study rates reached 18 percent.

Of the remaining 12 percent, 6 percent are still seeking employment, 3 percent are planning further study but have not yet been accepted into a program, and 3 percent are involved in other activities or programs such as the Peace Corps, Teach for America, or travel.

Programs to encourage more student participation in study abroad, undergraduate research and service-learning have increased dramatically.

Study-abroad participation has increased 73 percent in the past two years, to a total of 694.

A new master's degree in nursing has been introduced. We are starting a new biomedical engineering undergraduate program. In our School of Liberal Arts, we have a new Joint Purdue-IU School of Medicine Doctor of Audiology Program.

At Calumet we have two new degrees: a B.A. in human development and family, and an A.S./B.S. in computer graphics technology.

We've launched a B.S. in human services at Fort Wayne.

We have a new B.A. in communications and a B.S. in industrial technology at North Central.

We have launched a new B.S. in industrial technology in Statewide Technology.

We have initiated a collaborative admissions process for the Purdue system which enables the admission of qualified applicants to be spread across all Purdue campuses based on admission policies at each location.

Our strategic plans have resulted in the addition of 91 new faculty positions on the West Lafayette campus. Next fall we plan to add 56 more positions, bringing the total to 147.

This is helping to reduce our reliance on classes being taught by graduate teaching assistants. We are gradually moving a number of teaching assistants to research positions.

We are not only recruiting new faculty, we are recruiting top faculty.

At one Board of Trustees meeting this fall, three named and distinguished professors from the University of Notre Dame, Florida State University and the University of Tennessee were approved as new named and distinguished professors at Purdue.

We have recruited faculty and deans from Georgia Tech, Penn State, Illinois, Michigan, Duke, the University of Florida, Missouri, Louisiana State, Michigan State, Ohio State, Texas, University of Southern California, Harvard, Notre Dame and Northwestern, to name a few.

These three professors say they came to Purdue because they want to be part of what is taking place on this campus. They said there is progress taking place here that is unmatched anywhere else in the country.

It is a university with a vision and a dedication to see that vision through. There is an energy that is rushing through this campus and powering everything that we do. This progress is the result of success we are having with our strategic plans.

The success of our strategic plan initiatives is impacting our rankings.

Our Hotel and Tourism Management undergraduate program has been ranked No. 1 in two different surveys published in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education.

In U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate programs our Krannert School of Management MBA was 28th overall last year. It is now 24th.

Production/Operations Management went from 4th last year to second this year.

This fall the Krannert MBA program is ranked 3rd nationally among public schools in a Wall Street Journal annual recruiters poll.

In U.S. News & World Report rankings of best graduate schools engineering was 12th last year. It has now 9th.

Our School of Education graduate program, which was ranked 55th last year, is now ranked 44th.

In the most recent U.S. News & World Report, Purdue had 23 programs ranked in the top 10 and 39 in the top 20.

Peer institutions rankings showed an average of 45 programs among the top 10 and 69 among the top 20.

Our strategic plan goal area of engagement is effectively addressing the needs of society.

Purdue Research Park has become the first Certified Technology Park in Indiana.

Our park is being used as a model throughout the state. Within the park there are 104 businesses, of which 58 are high-tech, employing more than 2,500 people.

In technology transfer, patents issued increased by 29 percent to 27. Patent applications increased by 43 percent to 156. There were 147 disclosures. Licenses/options reached 78. Royalty revenue increased by 22 percent to $2.96 million.

In student service-learning engagement, there were 26 grants awarded during the year.

A 5-week National Youth Sports Program helped 250 children learn how to stay in shape, eat correctly and make positive life choices.

Engineering Projects in Community Service — known as EPICS — continues to be a national model in student service-learning, taking our students and their unique abilities out into our community. This year Purdue's EPICS program was one of five Indiana organizations that received the Governor's Award for Outstanding Volunteerism.

Purdue’s EPICS program is being expanded to other universities nationwide. Butler University, Case Western Reserve, Georgia Tech, Iowa State, Penn State, Illinois, Notre Dame, the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez and the University of Wisconsin have all joined the National EPICS program.

The National Science Foundation is supporting this expansion with $2.5 million. Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard are partnering in this effort.

EPICS has become the national model for service-learning, integrating community service into academics

The Science Bound program completed its first successful year with grants of more than $1 million.

This program is an outreach to Indianapolis Public Schools. We work with these students starting in junior high and make this commitment to them: If they are admitted to Purdue to study, engineering, technology, science, math, or science education, we will offer them full-tuition scholarships for four years.

Please watch this video and hear what these students have to say about the program themselves.

Most of those students who left the program after the first year did so because they moved out of the school district. Of the 52 continuing students, every single one of them improved their grades over the previous year.

Science Bound is one of the most exciting programs taking place in our state.

Thanks to a very generous gift from two Purdue alumni — Allen and Lee Hwa-Chao of Corona, California — Purdue is launching a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility based on U.S. Food and Drug Administration good manufacturing practices standards.

When completed in late 2004, Purdue will become the only university in the country with the facilities to both train personnel and manufacture pharmaceuticals for worldwide distribution and use.

In June, Eli Lilly announced it will team with Purdue in an exciting program to help fight rising problems with multiple drug resistant tuberculosis. As part of this effort, Purdue will partner with Lilly to develop training and provide certification of sound business management and good manufacturing practices for facilities in foreign nations that will receive the Lilly drug manufacturing technology.

Purdue will also receive manufacturing technology that will allow it to produce tuberculosis-fighting cycloserine.

This is the beginning of a whole new world of possibilities. Purdue's manufacturing facility will be able to profitably produce drugs that are needed by a relatively small number of people — a factor that makes it difficult for industry to meet the need.

In addition to filling a manufacturing need, Purdue's program will produce students even better prepared for the pharmaceutical business in Indiana.

We are working to achieve and sustain preeminence in our strategic plan goal area of discovery.

Discovery Park continues to develop and expand with centers for nanotechnology, biosciences and entrepreneurship already under construction.

Also under construction is our new biomedical engineering building, which is part of Discovery Park Phase II. We will soon begin construction on an e-enterprise center in Discovery Park, and a learning center has been added to the plans.

At Discovery Park we have a NASA Institute for Nanoelectronics and Computing; a NASA Specialized Center for Research and Training in Advanced Life Support; and a National Science Foundation Network for Computational Nanotechnology.

Purdue discovery is being dramatically advanced through our Center for Membrane Protein Biotechnology and the Indiana Center for Wireless Communications and Networking.

Rolls-Royce has created a "University Technology Center" at Purdue — the first in the United States.

About 90 percent of the 104 centers and institutes at Purdue are interdisciplinary.

In 2002-2003 they received $33.4 million in sponsored funding, an increase of $11.7 million in one year. Systemwide, Purdue sponsored programs last year set a record at $208.6 million. The West Lafayette campus attracted $198.6 million.

Major research highlights continue to reflect Purdue's strengths:

• Embryonic stem cell lines have been produced from zebrafish that will increase the utility of this poplar model organism for genetic studies of embryo development and human diseases.

• A non-invasive device was created and licensed using optical techniques to measure blood pressure, heart and respiratory rate and oxygen saturation in prematurely born babies.

• A machine designed for testing road surfaces and compositions in combination with tire designs could lead to a more precise understanding of the causes of highway noise.

• Purdue University biologists have determined the structure of the West Nile virus, a development that could greatly augment our understanding of the virus' life cycle.

Throughout the nation today, universities are cutting back programs and struggling just to stay even.

While this is taking place, Purdue is increasing faculty; increasing faculty salaries; increasing student scholarship and financial aid; increasing technology; adding new degree programs; launching visionary initiatives in learning, discovery and engagement; promoting economic development throughout our state; and constructing new buildings and facilities at a rate that is unprecedented in our history.

This is the result of solid support from the governor and General Assembly.

This is the result of generous support from our alumni and friends and our Campaign for Purdue.

This is the result of our strategic plans.

This is the result of hard work by our faculty and staff.

This is the result of leadership from our Board of Trustees.

Our plans provide us with a clear vision for preeminence and a road map for investing our resources that is leading us to success.

Our job now is to continue implementing our plans and delivering for our state.

Purdue is keeping its promises to our students, to our alumni and friends, and to the people of Indiana.

Once again, thanks to members of this board for your visions and hard work leading this exciting effort.

We still have far to go. But we are making great progress. I am convinced we will succeed.

And what we are accomplishing at Purdue today will prepare Indiana for leadership in the 21st century.


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